New proposals on business combinations, or: such a long journey

The IASB has published a package of proposals aimed at enhancing the information companies provide to investors about acquisitions. Here’s some of what the press release had to say: Regarding the exemption in the penultimate bullet, the exposure draft states: “an entity must be able to describe a specific reason for not disclosing an item…

Trump may kill off IFRS this year!

Did I get your attention with that? It’s an overstatement of course – even if he wins this year’s election, he won’t be inaugurated until next year, and his murderousness won’t fully flower quite that fast. But I stand by the substance: in a second age of Trump, the philosophy and promise of IFRS, and…

Aggregation of operating segments, or: that’s just nuts!

As part of its activities, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) organizes a forum of enforcers from 38 different European jurisdictions, all of whom carry out monitoring and review programs similar to those carried out here by the Canadian Securities Administrators. ESMA recently published some extracts from its confidential database of enforcement decisions on…

More developments in sustainability reporting, or: urgent need!

The Canadian Sustainability Standards Board has issued for comment its first two proposed standards. These are proposed Canadian Sustainability Disclosure Standard (CSDS) 1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information  and CSDS 2 Climate-related Disclosures, built on the pre-existing IFRS S1 and S2. Perhaps surprisingly, the CSSB didn’t propose any major changes to the…

New US climate-related disclosures, or: high-priced guesses!

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted rules to enhance and standardize climate-related disclosures by public companies and in public offerings. The final rules “reflect the Commission’s efforts to respond to investors’ demand for more consistent, comparable, and reliable information about the financial effects of climate-related risks on a registrant’s operations and how…

Shareholder decision-making rights and financial instruments, or: we can’t tell where we end and they begin!

As we addressed previously, the IASB has issued the Exposure Draft Financial Instruments with Characteristics of Equity—Proposed amendments to IAS 32, IFRS 7 and IAS 1, with a comment deadline of March 29, 2024. We previously looked at the aspects of the exposure draft relating to the “fixed-for-fixed” criterion, settlement in an entity’s own equity instruments,…

AI and Movies, or: toward that happy ending!

Nowadays I think about movies much more than I do about accounting… …which might be occasionally evident from this blog (see for example here and here). A February 13, 2024 speech by SEC Chair Gary Gensler, titled “AI, Finance, Movies, and the Law,” suggests his attention is sometimes distracted along similar lines. Here are some…

Reclassifications of financial instruments – sometimes, things change!

The IASB has issued the Exposure Draft Financial Instruments with Characteristics of Equity—Proposed amendments to IAS 32, IFRS 7 and IAS 1, with a comment deadline of March 29, 2024. We previously looked at the aspects of the exposure draft relating to the “fixed-for-fixed” criterion and to settlement in an entity’s own equity instruments. The exposure…

The impact of a typo, or: too great a lyft!

“Typo in Lyft earnings sends shares aloft nearly 70%,” announced a recent CBS News story. Here’s what it had to say: The coverage on Forbes.com added the following perspective: Forbes notes for background that “according to market research firm YipitData, (Lyft) has held around 30% of the US rideshare market compared with 70% for Uber…

More on Canada’s accounting wars, or: gutted!

As helpfully summarized by the Canadian Press, “CPA Canada was created in 2013 to unify the various professional accounting organizations across the country. (The) provincial organizations are regulators and enforcers of the profession, while the national organization is responsible for standards and co-ordinates education and the common exam written by all would-be CPAs, among other…